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Dance

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Dance

Dance is Spectrum of Ecstasy’s technical term for the non-dual structural-relation between khandro and pawo — the two aspects of each element’s reality that are not-two yet not-collapsed-into-one.

The Ch.11 Technical Definition

“Dance describes the nature of reality, in terms of the oscillation of unitary reality with multiplistic reality. It also describes the way in which non-duality can be experienced as having two aspects that are not separate. If you look at two people dancing together — you have the spectacle of two people; but they are moving together. So is this singular or plural? Or is it both? Or is it both reflecting both? This is the meaning of dance.” — NR, Ch.11

Key structural-claims:

  • Dance = “oscillation of unitary reality with multiplistic reality”
  • Dance = “way in which non-duality can be experienced as having two aspects that are not separate”
  • Dance = two-people-dancing-together analogue — not one, not two, both-reflecting-both

The Ch.13 Expanded Treatment

Ch.13 (the book’s closing chapter) develops dance at full exposition.

Partnership Structure

“Dance, in this sense, is something that we do with a partner. The idea is that we ourselves are dancers, and that the pawos and khandros are our dance partners.”

The Gendered Formula

“If you are a woman, your dance is with the pawo. If you are a man, your dance is with the khandro. Pawo and khandro are the male and female aspects of experience. Pawo is the form aspect of emptiness and khandro is the emptiness aspect of form.”

PractitionerDance PartnerSees Phenomena As
Male tantrikaKhandroFemale / wisdom-display / play of emptiness
Female tantrikaPawoMale / method-display / play of form

Structural-point: the gendered-formula is not about social-gender-role but about the symbolic-Tantric perception-reorientation. Each gender takes a vow to see-the-phenomenal-world-as-the-opposite-gender’s principle.

Dance Variants

“Sometimes the dance is smooth and elegant. Sometimes it is wild and furious. Sometimes you cannot quite seem to keep up — but this, in itself, is still dance.”

Dance phase-space:

  • Smooth and elegant — unified with partner
  • Wild and furious — turbulent
  • Struggling to keep up — still dance
  • Stiff and graceless — one person always leading
  • War dance / battle — both trying to lead

All are dance. Dance never stops.

Dance Never Stops

“Dance never stops. So we can never say: ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, but I think I’ll just sit this one out’. That does not happen with this kind of dance. That does not happen with emotions either. We get dragged out onto the dance floor whether we like it or not — kicking and screaming if necessary.”

No opt-out available. The emotions are the dance; one cannot opt out of having emotions any more than one can opt out of the khandro-pawo dance.

Effortless Dance — Unification With Partner

“Unless we have some sense of space, there is no way out of this experience — but when there is space, dance can become spontaneously self-realised. It simply needs to become effortless, and effortless dancing can only happen through unifying with one’s dance partner. When we are unified with the pawo or khandro, our feet hardly touch the ground. The movement is beyond the individual dancers. We discover that being danced is not something that has to be struggled against; or, maybe, that dance and dancer are an indivisible phenomenon.”

Key moves:

  • Without space → no way out of turbulent-dance
  • With space → dance becomes spontaneously self-realised
  • Unification with partner → feet hardly touch the ground
  • Movement beyond the individual dancers
  • “Being danced” not to be struggled against
  • Dance and dancer = indivisible phenomenon

Dance is Sexual

“The dance is a sexual dance, but not necessarily in the ordinary sense of the word. The dance is sexual in that we penetrate phenomenal reality and are engulfed by it. The dance is sexual in that we are penetrated by phenomenal reality at the same time that we engulf it. Reality penetrates us and is engulfed by our senses.”

Sexual = mutual penetration-and-engulfment. The word sexual names the structural-form (mutual-penetration-engulfment-simultaneity) that extends from the ordinary-sexual-register to the whole of phenomenal-engagement.

At the ordinary-register: sexual-perception is the paradigmatic-experience of this mutual-structure. At the extended-register (the Ch.13 claim): all perception has this structure — our senses penetrate reality while reality engulfs our senses (and vice versa).

This is the phenomenological-ground for the zap-lam practice’s use of sexual-sensation as practice-material. The sexual-Tantric practices are not metaphor-extensions but direct-registers of the already-present structural-form.

Dance at the Emotion-Level

Ch.13’s emotion-specific application:

“Seen in this way, the form of our emotions (how we react to our feelings) is the pawo aspect — the form aspect of emptiness. The emptiness of our emotions is how they feel — this is the khandro aspect, the emptiness aspect of form.”

But the assignment is perspective-reversible:

“When the nature of the feelings is seen as pawo, then the experiential emptiness from which they arise is seen as khandro. Then, when the reactions that arise from experiencing emotions are seen as khandro, the external causes that trigger those feelings and reactions are seen as pawo.”

Dance’s reversibility at the emotion-level is what makes the framework dynamic rather than static. There is no fixed-pawo / fixed-khandro in emotion-phenomenology — only the dance-relation between whichever-is-taken-as-form-now and whichever-is-taken-as-emptiness-now.

Dance as Universe-Description

“All these many pawos and khandros arise out of the primary play of the elements — the khyil-khor (mandala) of phenomenal existence. This is why in Tantric terminology our entire universe (and everything that functions as part of it) is called ‘the wisdom dance of the five pawos and khandros’.”

The universe = the wisdom-dance of the five pawos and khandros. The dance is not a practice-metaphor but the structural-name of reality.

The Book’s Closing Epigraph on Dance

Ch.13 opens and closes with this formulation:

“Our emotions and our personal environment are the dance of the khandros and pawos. To know our reality as the dance of the khandros and pawos is to fall in love with them. To fall in love with them is to discover our beginningless enlightenment in the endless empty nature of their dance.”

Three levels:

  1. Ontological — reality is the dance.
  2. Epistemic-Devotional — to know this is to fall in love.
  3. Soteriological — to fall in love is to discover beginningless enlightenment in the empty-dance.

Dance and Roaring Silence’s Terminology

Roaring Silence has analogous structural-terms at its non-symbolic Sem-dé ngöndro register:

  • Nè-pa / gYo-wa alternation — the abiding/arising pair whose one-taste is nyi’mèd
  • Fluxing web (kun trol) — the dynamic pattern of form-and-emptiness
  • Honey on the razor’s edge — the Ch.5 fan-dance-complement metaphor

Dance is the symbolic-Tantric version of the same structural-claim: two-aspects-of-one-reality whose non-duality is discoverable but cannot be collapsed into unity-or-duality.

The Intellect’s Limit

NR in Ch.13: “The pawo/khandro experience can become an intellectual hall of mirrors — if you try to grasp its meaning with the logical mind. The only way into the pristine purity of the nature of the mirror itself is by cultivating the experience of emptiness.”

Dance cannot be intellectually-grasped — only practice-discovered. See Living the View. The intellect’s limit is marked by the Ch.12 intellect-as-spade parable.

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